


Surfacing

by Miss_M



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Hymn to Demeter - Homer
Genre: Blank Verse, Body Horror, Crueltide, Dark, Depression, Gen, Poetry, Transformation, Trauma, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:14:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27718697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: Surfacing is hell.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 15
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2020





	Surfacing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceQueenKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/gifts).



> I own nothing.

Surfacing is hell. 

The sunlight is daggers in her eyes.  
Her lungs inflate, her ribs crack –  
She’s grown unused to breathing.  
Everything smells,  
And everything comes in wild colors.  
The dead only rustle and sigh,  
But the world Above is full of noise.

Her senses have adjusted to less  
And now must take in more,  
And her body is never fit for it.

Most often, she is stone.  
Her joints are stiff,  
Her teeth grind like boulders.  
She moves slowly, eons-slow.  
Children run from her.  
She creaks. A boulder-woman. 

Her mother’s wooden chairs break under her.  
She must sleep on the floor at first.  
Meals last half a day, so slowly she chews,  
Till her body becomes its Above self again,  
And still she is always cold and stiff,  
And her skin feels nothing much.  
Even after she seems herself again,  
Only the corners of people’s eyes watch her.  
They flinch from her laugh. When she speaks,  
Their faces tighten.

Sometimes, she is Other in a different way. 

One year, she saw her feet swift and human in the grass,  
Her hands before her eyes were narrow  
And light as swallows on the air.  
The air hissed around her head as she ran.  
Her mother’s servants rushed to greet her,  
Their faces relieved for once,  
Till they came close and turned to stone:  
She had snakes growing from her scalp.

Another time, she didn’t recognize anyone.  
Every face looked as blank as a dinner plate,  
And voices susurrated in her ear.  
Her mother talked to her every day,  
But she didn’t learn to pick out Demeter’s blank face,  
Demeter’s blank voice from all the others.  
Autumn couldn’t come quickly enough that year.

One year, she couldn’t stop watching  
The pulse points beating on people’s necks  
While they talked to her. Another year,  
Clothes chafed her so much, she ran on all fours  
And kept her place on the floor till autumn.  
Yet another time, she could smell everyone rotting  
In the dog days of summer,  
And no one would believe her.  
One year… One year…  
It’s been a long spool of springs and autumns.

Every year, Demeter weeps  
On her surfacing and on her going Under,  
And she’s never solved the riddle: what to say.

People fill her in on what she missed,  
And none of it makes much sense.  
Nothing is ever intense enough to touch  
The stiff, blank, indifferent essence of Hades  
She carries inside her, like a stone seed.  
She never really adjusts before summer’s end –  
She just lies about it. And still,  
Going Under is like what she imagines dying must be  
For mortals, only she does it again and again,  
And even for a goddess, it’s a lot.

Surfacing is hell. 

But then, every autumn –  
She feels every second of it, every inch of it,  
Her Above self expanding to become the stone queen,  
Till her skin splits, and the undifferentiated gloom  
Of the Under pours in to meet  
The indifferent darkness spilling from within.


End file.
